Rosenkranz & Güldenstern

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Rosenkranz & Güldenstern
Original title Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Country of production UK , USA
original language English
Publishing year 1990
length 118 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Tom Stoppard
script Tom Stoppard
production Emanuel Azenberg ,
Michael Brandman ,
Iris Merlis ,
Thomas J. Rizzo ,
Louise Stephens ,
Patrick Whitley
music Stanley Myers
camera Peter Biziou
cut Nicolas Gaster
occupation

Rosenkranz & Güldenstern is a feature film by the British playwright, screenwriter and director Tom Stoppard from 1990. The tragicomedy is a transmission of Stoppard's play Rosenkrantz and Güldenstern are dead (1966). The two main characters are originally secondary characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet .

action

As its title suggests, the film is about the childhood friends of Hamlet, Rosenkranz and Güldenstern. The two characters, who are rather unimportant in Shakespeare's tragedy, play the main role in Tom Stoppard's film, however, and you can see how the two slither awkwardly through the story of Hamlet.

The film begins in a dreary forest through which the two main actors travel. Out of boredom, one of the two coins begins to flip, but the result of the game of chance is always the same: heads. While Rosenkranz (Gary Oldman) is happy about his winning streak and his new record, Güldenstern (Tim Roth) tries to question the miracle and philosophizes about the laws of probability. The story continues in a bizarre way, because neither Rosenkranz nor Güldenstern can remember why they are actually on the journey. However, it slowly occurs to them that they have been summoned to the court of Denmark by the king.

They travel on and meet a traveling theater that offers the two of them its dubious services. However, Rosenkranz and Güldenstern are disgusted and leave the drama group.

When they arrive at court, the two immediately receive their order from the king, with the option of either accepting or rejecting the task. As with Shakespeare, the task is to cheer up the depressed Hamlet and at the same time to find the reason for his sadness. Rosenkranz and Güldenstern agree, but regret their decision shortly afterwards.

To prepare for the conversation with Hamlet, the two invent a game whose content is to ask the other questions. Every question is followed by a counter-question, whoever fails to do this has lost. After this game and a little confusion about their names, the two play another game in which one of the two takes on the role of Hamlet and the other the role of two friends.

The meeting of Rosenkranz and Güldenstern with Hamlet is unsuccessful for the two, because they are unable to coax anything from Hamlet. Hamlet manages to outsmart and confuse the two. Rosenkranz and Güldenstern try to interpret Hamlet's confused statements, but they fail. After talking to Hamlet, the actors perform a play for Hamlet while Rosenkranz plays with the mechanics of a trap door. The next day, Rosenkranz and Güldenstern burst into a performance by the traveling theater. The actors show a selection of scenes from the original as a pantomime. When the King and Queen ask about their progress shortly thereafter, they claim that they have already made good progress.

A short, bizarre conversation between Rosenkranz and Güldenstern about the inconvenience of a coffin is followed by another theater scene in which the murder of the king by his brother is depicted. The depiction is disturbed by a stormy argument between Ophelia and Hamlet. After Hamlet leaves the stage, the King appears and decides that Hamlet has to go to England.

Neither the actors nor the two main actors are impressed by the appearance of Hamlet, Ophelia and the king and start a discussion about fate and death. The head of the actors claims that no one can decide their fate and that anyone “marked for death” will die at the end of the play. The version of the piece that has just been rehearsed is played to the king, who recognizes himself and leaves the performance in shock, which, however, is not understood by Rosenkranz and Güldenstern.

After the two receive the order to bring Hamlet to England, they witness the murder of Polonius. In the next scene, Rosenkranz and Güldenstern find themselves on a ship without knowing how they got there. Since Rosenkranz is very worried, the two start a role-playing game in which Rosenkranz plays the King of England and Güldenstern himself. During their game, Rosenkranz opens the sealed letter and reads it aloud. So the two learn that they should bring Hamlet to England so that he can be killed there. Rosenkranz thinks that Hamlet should be warned that they are old friends of his. Güldenstern believes, however, that they should not disturb the natural processes and that death is unstoppable and maybe not so bad at all.

While Rosenkranz and Güldenstern are sleeping, Hamlet exchanges the king's letter for a forgery. Shortly afterwards, the two are awakened by the attack by pirates. Hamlet leaps onto the pirate ship in the heat of the moment. After the situation has calmed down again, Rosenkranz and Güldenstern notice that they cannot do their job without Hamlet. Again they play the role-play and again they open the king's letter, but this time the names Rosenkranz and Güldenstern take the place of Hamlet.

Once again, Rosenkranz and Güldenstern are seized by despair, because they cannot believe that they are about to die. The actor does not understand the excitement about her death, since in his experience almost everything ends in death. In order to show the actor what death actually is, Rosenkranz grabs the actor's dagger and stabs him with it. However, the dagger was only a theatrical prop and the actor survived. The film ends with the deaths of Rosenkranz and Güldenstern.

interpretation

Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), on which the film is based, is a typical example of the absurd drama . The formal parallels to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1952) are even more striking than the parallels in terms of content to Shakespeare's Hamlet : like Vladimir and Estragon there, Rosenkranz and Güldenstern appear here as two halves of the same character, permanently on it, to somehow pass the time by getting caught up in endless question-and-answer games, constantly interrupting, contradicting or simply remaining silent for longer periods of time. True to Shakespeare's knowledge All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players (“The whole world is a stage and all the men and women are just actors”) they are like mere chess pieces wandering from chess board to chess board not quite see through who they are actually being pushed: by the scheming king who uses them for his intrigue? About Hamlet, who also plays the role of the madman before and with them? Or just from the director of the absurd himself?

When Rosenkranz and Güldenstern meet the traveling actors and they demonstrate their skills in order to win them over as spectators, a suitcase opens on the stage wagon during the performance, from which some sheet of music falls. These papers appear again and again in the following scenes in the film. This gives the audience the impression that Rosenkranz and Güldenstern never really leave the stage of the drama car. Although they believe they are continuing their journey, they always remain “trapped” in the drama and, as one of the players put it, become “part of the performance” themselves. This impression is reinforced by the fact that after each change of scene, Rosenkranz and Güldenstern puzzle over where they are and how they got there: From the forest to the ballroom? Or from Hamlet's mother's back room to the boat going to England? - At the end you can see how the troop dismantle the stage of their car and drive on to confirm this game in the game.

criticism

  • epd Film 3/1991: Even the consistent ironization and stylization, which is sometimes quite fun, ultimately does not save the film, because it never goes beyond the framework of the theater.
  • film-dienst 4/1991: Opulently equipped film pleasure that imaginatively varies the specifications and reflects in many ways the role of people in the world; played brilliantly.
  • Der Spiegel 9/1991: The stars Richard Dreyfuss, Tim Roth and Gary Oldman go to great lengths with self-indulgent glee - yet the film, like the piece, is full of witchcraft, and remains a rather academic pleasure.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Rosenkranz, for example, discovers physical phenomena for himself or "invents" things like gravity, elastic shock or the airplane, that is, milestones in human history that have advanced technical development or are fundamental to today's physics. However, these “discoveries” are repeatedly ridiculed by Güldenstern, ignored or destroyed.
  2. ↑ Jaques in As you like it , Act II, Scene VII
  3. ↑ Rosenkranz and Güldenstern also don't always know who is who, and they often mix up.
  4. ↑ Survival Comedian II . In: Der Spiegel , February 25, 1991. Retrieved October 8, 2013.

Awards

Tom Stoppard's film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1990 and prevailed against Martin Scorsese's mafia epic Good Fellas - Three decades in the mafia . Leading actor Gary Oldman received an Independent Spirit Award nomination in 1992 , but fell short of River Phoenix ( My Private Idaho ).

Web links